my work – Page 9 – Bonnie McClellan-Broussard

Hank Williams Calls it Quits

why this morning?
why that particular song?
why that 5 min. clip of my life:

the saturated taste
of anonymous food from
a particular bar and grill
salad
that tastes too much like itself
that i can’t bear to eat
my gut too full
of wanting.

only the bitter of
iced tea is
palatable,
over the garble and hum
of some game
summing itself up
behind the intentional
chaos of bar bric.

the hallowed blue
of your eyes
reaching in for something
i don’t have
your pallid tenor echoing
uncharacteristic honky-tonk
verses with the digital
hiccup-skip of a
corrupted file:

why don’t you love me
like you used to do?

Starch gazing

passed
repassed

making up
summer’s cracking
white bed.

chemin di fer á vapeur
ferro via vapore
steam-iron road

repast
past

Internet suite: Sappho’s Sandals

how are the toning shoes working?
(I keep seeing an add for those too,
over here to the side) but these are sneakers,
not sandals.

Should I join the “Performers Café”
as suggested…713 others like it
but it’s only for musicians.

Am I that?

Sappho would say yes,
Poetry is singing:

She would lift
her garlanded brow,
her ivory arms,
her silver voice:

“up with the roof!
Hymenaios –
lift it, carpenters!
Hymenaios –
the bridegroom is coming in
equal to Ares…”

Perhaps she knew
the “Secret Psycology”
they’re touting at:
Make Him Fall For You?
Or maybe her fall…
or maybe,
she just had
a good pair

of toning sandals?

Internet Suite: Asian Child / Mediterranean Island

Today as i visit your page i find ads for:
Asian Parent! with writing in an ideogrammatic language;
Love Beads – do you love beading?
Three adds for vacation spots:
French House Party, Carcassonne…
Hotel Vincent, Parisian Luxury.
and a Mediterranean Island I’ve never heard of.

I imagine myself, poolside on an
anonymous island between france and
north africa
beading away
with an asian child;
She stands behind me,
bending over my beading,
and strokes my thick,
black hair.

I smile at her,
she looks like
the sister of
Momataro,
a peach of a girl.

On Algorithms

The Algorithm itself is perfect
tic, tic, tic-ing away for infinity:
empty of integers,
free from the flawed intervention
of an operator fumbling,
wrenching up the equation.

A cell phone rings:
No call, no message.
I look up,
She is
black clothed tight
enough to delineate her hyperbolic curves.
She is
playing all the ringtones
on her slip of a phone.
She is
bored of them all
before beginning.
She is
still listening to this sad bird
peep out every musical algorithm it knows.

I think:
It’s like a mockingbird
or
The Emperor of China’s
Clockwork nightingale
That can’t chase death away.

Deconstructionist Repairman

The deconstructionist repair man

invites you to enjoy

the brokeness of your item;

he restores your faith in it

‘as is’.

He tells you:
“It’s true beauty is exposed,

now that it’s falling apart.”
Perhaps he will find that it’s not broken enough.

He will fix it:
set each component aside, gently

to aid your contemplation

of it’s inner truth.
He asks, “What is the ultimate reality of this object?”

now that he’s stripped it

of morality’s mask:

utility.

Internet Suite: Duet

There was a rain storm yesterday and across the street
It rained rose petals from the climbers in the garden above.
The wet asphalt was drenched with these pink drops
licking the stern obscurity of letters not still white
S T O P.

******

I am immersed in a Japan that isn’t.
Google and FB know.

To the side has just appeared an ad for an opera singer
Japanese,
Whose voice “goes down like the smoothest of alcoholic beverages”
Which is not really how I like my opera.

Do they have a singer whose voice:
“scalds like strong, hot coffee first thing in the morning?”
“is as transcendent as a great orgasm?”
“who evokes an abyss of guilt and sadness comparable only to leaving your sobbing child as you walk away from the school?”

If yes, I’ll buy.

Horizontal Hold

The horizontal holds:
the grazing kiss
of aether / liquid / solid.
dusty icon within
the oyster
of the half-opened eye.

Paroles Vides (pour Jaques Prévert)

PAROLES VIDES (pour Jaques Prévert)

Savoir faire, sauveur, sauge…
sauvage:
Creuse RUE DE SEINE
Le sein s’élargit sous les pierres
avec un souffle scintillant
á dix heurs e demie:
“dis-moi la vérité…”
Pierre.
Savoir faire dire
la vérité est vide:
Remplirons
avec nos paroles
aussi vides
aussi belles e sauvages.
Sauge / Saveur.
Savoir / Sauveur.
Sa voix faire…

EMPTY WORDS (for Jaques Prévert)

Know how, saviour, sage…
savage:
Excavate RUE DE SEINE
The breast expands under stones
with a glinting sigh
at ten thirty:
“tell me the truth…”
Stone.
Know how to say
the truth is empty:
Let’s fill it
with our words
also empty
also full of savage beauty.
Sage / Savor.
Knowing / Saviour.
Her voice knows…

Lombard Spring / Rondeau á Lago Maggiore

The Spring won’t come. A dun bird shifts
his leaden wing and preens the quick
unplanished sky. The rain holds back
above the glacier’s mirrored lac.
Sheet pinned to sheet clouds sullen drift,

Mountain’s iron foot shores the split,
Dis’ black horses elude the bit.
In white re-dressed the peak sounds back:
The Spring won’t come!

Persephone irons out her shift,
Twists off her leaden ring and quick
folds up famine’s sheet; sighs, turns back
to Somnus’ smile ingrained with lack
of sleep pinned to sleep, beauty drifts,
the Spring won’t come.

listen to this poem here: